The present invention relates to a new and improved construction of capotasto which is of the type comprising a substantially U-shaped, metallic bracket, one leg of which is equipped with a string depressor cushion or pad and the other leg of which is provided with a clamping or tightening device intended to engage at the underside of the neck of the related instrument. The invention thus is concerned with a so-called "open" capotasto.
Apart from the so-called "closed" capotastos, i.e., those where they completely enclose the neck of the stringed instrument, for instance a guitar, lute, banjo or the like, there are also known to the art capotastos of the previously mentioned type. Such are constructed in the manner of a screw-clamp, wherein the pressure leg, located opposite the clamping device constructed as a threaded spindle, is provided with a string depressor cushion or pad. Upon tightening the threaded spindle such engages essentially at a comparatively small surface or area of the underside of the neck of the instrument and which underside, as a general rule, is usually of convex configuration. If with the heretofore known capotasto it is desired to fixedly clamp all of the strings extending over the finger or fret board, then it is necessary, prior to tightening the threaded spindle, to manually press the leg equipped with the string depressor cushion into the desired position at the finger board and then to still shift such transversely with respect to the instrument neck or finger board, in order that the threaded spindle approximately engages at that location of the underside of the instrument neck where the tangential plane extends parallel to the plane of the finger board.
Even with these cumbersome manipulations the state-of-the-art capotasto nonetheless does not provide any assurance that during playing of the instrument it will not tilt about the lengthwise axis of the neck, so that the clamping action at a part of the strings is lost. Furthermore, the prior art capotasto gets in the way of the hand of the user of the instrument.